This seminar focuses on contemporary young adult fiction in which the protagonists fall silent by experiences of violence. We will analyse how speechlessness is implemented through the use of certain narrative techniques. Wolfgang Iser's theory of blanks plays a central role here, but aspects of trauma and trauma fiction are also included. We ask ourselves the central question of whether falling silent and its narratological realisation is based on the physical and psychological traumatic experiences or whether the concept of speechlessness can also be understood as a social construct.
Literature to be acquired: Laurie Halse Anderson: Speak. ISBN: 978-0312674397